William J. Borucki
American meteorologist, planetary scientist and physicist · United States · On the map · Scientists · Born 1939 · age 87
William J. (Bill) Borucki is a space scientist who worked at the NASA Ames Research Center. Upon joining NASA in 1962, Borucki joined the group conducting research on the heat shield for Apollo program spacecraft.
William J. Borucki is read about 9 times a day, in 10 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 21 June 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A life in dates
Media & music
![The effort to launch Kepler was spearheaded by Borucki, who is now its principal investigator.[6]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Telescope-KeplerSpacecraft-20130103-717260main_pia11824-full.jpg/1280px-Telescope-KeplerSpacecraft-20130103-717260main_pia11824-full.jpg)
Awards
About this person
He later turned his attention to the optical efficiency of lightning strikes in the atmospheres of planets, investigating the propensity that these lightning strikes could create molecules that would later become the precursors for life. Subsequently, Borucki's attention turned to extrasolar planets and their detection, particularly through the transit method. In light of this work, Borucki was named the principal investigator for NASA's Kepler space telescope mission, launched on March 7, 2009 and dedicated to a transit-based search for habitable planets. In 2013, Borucki was awarded the United States National Academy of Sciences's Henry Draper Medal for his work with Kepler. In 2015 he received the Shaw Prize in Astronomy.
